Knowing the Difference
One of the basic concepts of writing is knowing how
to properly write a summary. Not many
students will agree that it is one of the most important things to know,
because some think that not every major works with summaries, but actually what
people fail to realize is that there is more than one way to do a summary. While it is something that everyone should of
possibly learned at a very young age, possibly in grammar school, how to do and
understand, it is not well known that plot summaries are not the only forms of
a summary. Interpretation, explaining
something from your point of view, is another way to write a summary.
As a college student, when given an
assignment that says to write a summary, unless addressed to do something
otherwise, most would assume to write a plot summary. But when speaking to Dr. Chandler she had
expressed how when her students give her plot summaries, it is not what she
asked for, she is looking for interpretations.
Most would agree with me, unless told otherwise that if they were given
that type of assignment that they would think to do a plot summary. While sorting through the transcripts, what
is evident is that many students are not aware of the different types of
summaries and what they are expected to do with them when addressed to do one
by a professor.
Literature Review:
A
summary is developed after reading a piece of work and giving the main focus of
it in a few short paragraphs and it is meant to not be as long as the work
itself and should be cut by at least half of the work. But some students do not understand that
summarizing is not about copying it is about giving the facts. But there are different ways of summarizing;
plot summary is when you need to give main points to it, while interpretation
summary is when you give you point of view as to what had happened. While they both are taking information from a
source, it leads into the issue of due students really understand how to do
summaries effectively?
Writing from
Sources, Writing from Sentences
by Rebecca Moore Howard, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue explains that
the fact that so many students leave out summary of sources shows that their
practices of reading may not be as up to par as expected or should be. Instead of taking the time to do a summary
effectively, many are resulting to giving copied work or paraphrasing work and
although they may list it as a source when the student is done, they are not
giving their own interpretation of the events from the work, they are simply
describing it to the audience in an incomplete, or unjustified way. This is so because they may be either doing
patchwork, or simply copying which is not only against academic integrity, but
it also does not allow the student to expand their knowledge of a subject.
The important rules to follow when
summarizing are to delete material from the text, involve generalizing from
specific sources, use specifics from the source, and make up your own
interpretation of what was in the paragraphs.
But one of the most common methods of summarizing is to paraphrase a
sentence and expand from that (Rebecca Moore Howard).
Methods:
The participants of this study were chosen to get a
sense of how different majors use and can understand the boundaries between the
summaries whether they use them often or have only done them once in their
college career. The subjects chosen were
not aware of what types of questions they would be asked and also all come from
different majors so their academics vary. They were also chosen because they
have taken courses where there is a lot of summarizing, or do a heavy amount of
writing for their major, or so I thought.
The subjects go by Claire, Mary, and Jana and all
are college students. Claire, a
senior at Kean University who majors in Communications, was very confident
during the interview and because there is a lot of writing in the
communications major she answered everything thoroughly. As opposed to
Mary, a junior at Kean University seeking a degree in Marketing, seemed very
much was lost during the interview and could not answer my questions as well as
Claire had. Jana is a freshman at
Flagler College and has just started to observe what she will need for her
degree as a Journalism major. Jana and
Claire seemed to be the two out of the three that had the most confidence in
the interview and were not afraid to express what they had thought of the
subject whether it was positively or negatively.
Analysis of Transcripts:
Starting with Claire it was noticeable that she was
confident with the interview and had a lot to say. Her body language screamed professional and
the way she spoke was with confidence, which was another quality I also saw in
Jana. But, when
interviewing Mary you could sense the nerves in her voice. Initially when she asked what the interview
would consist of it was explained that it would be about knowing the boundaries
between summaries and if one understands them accurately. Mary was still on board with doing the
interview but you could hear the nerves in her voice as she seemed unsure if
she was answering the questions well enough.
The focus with the interview questions
was starting out simple. The subjects
were asked if they knew what a summary was and every one of them answered
“yes”. Expecting them to go on with their
answers there was an awkward silence that filled the room so the next questions
came forth sooner than expected.
Do you know what a summary is?
Claire: A summary is
a snapshot of an entire plot where you don’t need to exactly read every word
but the summary gives you the descriptive details that you do need, they basically
give you the gist of the story, like the character, the plot, maybe the
conflict where they may at least attempt to give you the conflict in some type
of way but not unreal the whole entire thing for you but a summary is just
usually maybe a couple of sentences just to maybe give you an idea of the
topic, or a story, or a subject or anything like that.
Mary: Something that
sums up the whole rest of your paper?
Jana: A summary is a brief statement about
something.
The next question goes into how much the subjects
use the summaries for their major and if they understand what their professors
expected out of them as they prepared themselves to write for assignments that
required summaries. When asked the
question if they knew there was more than one type of summary, two out of three
of them answered that they were in fact unaware of this and when explained
about the difference between interpretation summaries and plot summaries they
understood why interpretations would be what the professor wanted but would not
classify it as a summary and would rather be told to do an interpretation to be
clear. What a lot of students fail to realize is that a lot of professors,
when asking students to give them a summary they are expecting an
interpretation summary, not a plot summary.
Any comments?
Jana: The
professors are right to ask this of students because they have already read or
seen whatever they are assigning to the students, what they want to know is
what it meant to the student
This response held interest because Jana is correct, the
professors have read these assignments they give us so many times and they are
looking for what we think of it. Because
Jana uses the interpretation technique of a summary so often in her major, she
understands that a professor is expecting you to tell them something they do
not already know, something they may not have picked up from reading the
material. But to a lot of people that is
not made clear and it although Jana had understood that her professors wanted
interpretations, Claire and Mary were not so aware of this. Mary felt that because her major does not
deal with summaries as much as other majors she would not think to ever do an
interpretation unless she had been given a case study to do for her marketing
major. Claire felt that it made sense
for professors to want that out of their students but that they should
differentiate between the summaries and specifically tell the students they
want interpretations. But in Claire’s
transcript she had also stated that it is embedded into our minds to think to
do summaries a certain way and that is why she would not have thought about
using interpretations.
One specific question, “Do you think it’s more important
to know an interpretation summary or a plot summary?” was answered by the
subjects, with all of their answers being interpretation. When asking them why they felt this way it
was either they really understood why interpretations were really needed more
of if they just knew that interpretations were better representations of a
story.
Claire: Because I mean, anybody could write verbatim,
ya know, of a summary like finding a new way to rewrite a story without writing
it the same exact way but interpretative makes it so much more about you and
how you look at it and how you angle it so it makes you think more and think
about it on your own versus kind of rewording what they have already written as
a basic summary format.
Mary: Because… It’s like a requirement to know
that.
Jana: It depends on the situation or the
assignment. Some people want a plot summary and others want the interpretation.
In my major, journalism, it is often what is assigned of you to do.
While the subjects showed that it really does depend on
your major how much you use writing and do summaries. But the focus of this was to see who actually
understood that there is more than one concept of a summary. While the marketing department in Mary’s case
would not require her to do much writing in general except for her case
analysis. Claire was using
interpretations often in communications, but was not aware of the fact that she
was doing a different form of a summary other than a plot summary. What has been noticeable was that Jana was
fully aware of the difference between interpretation and plot summaries and
what her professors expect out of her.
Could it be that her professors, because she does attend a different
school unlike the subjects that attend Kean, that she was told right from the
beginning of her freshman year that her professors want interpretations? Could it be that when she entered as a
freshman to Flagler they had explained to her right off the bat the plot
summaries are a thing of the past unless said otherwise?
Would
you say it’s important to know and learn the basic concepts of a summary?
Claire: Um yeah I think it would help to have it not
retaught to us but maybe mentioned to us again while we are in college because
ya know some stuff you don’t always remember from college so to have a
refresher I think that’s a good idea.
Mary: It depends on like what you want to do in
life.
Jana: Yes because there are times when your
professor in school, or your boss at work wants a summary, but if you are
unaware of how to give a proper summary then you are out of luck and either
receive a low grade or your boss looks down on you now.
While a refresher course may not be in the works any time
soon, the ladies agree that it should be done, although Mary had said it
depends on what you want to do she uses interpretations for her major often so
if they dealt with that in a course then she agreed that it would be of help to
those who need it. While Jana and Claire
agreed that the course should be offered but think maybe even mentioning it in
freshman English would work also because it will allow the students to really
understand the subject fully even if a course can’t be offered.
Conclusion/Limitations:
For this
specific study it was difficult to narrow down just to three people because it
may have been easier if I had gotten information from people from more
majors. There just was not enough time,
and it would of made the paper entirely too long, to go to one person from
every major and get their input of what they consider to be a boundary between
the summary and if the they fully understand what a professor wants from them
as a student.
All in all this experience showed me that not every
major deals with the same material. Although that was known when starting
this, I really did not expect that one of my subjects really would not have
much to say about their experiences with summaries and whether they actually
use them in their fields. It would be interesting to know how many other
majors do not use summaries the majority of the time because
there isn't much writing unless doing a case analysis. That
would be the only limitation that came with this research, because there are
just too many people to interview and not enough time to go around to every
major. The differences between the summaries should be addressed by
faculty of every major to the students as incoming freshman because the student
body may be unaware of what they are meant to do for the professor’s
assignments.
Bibliography
Rebecca
Moore Howard, Tricia Serviss, and Tanya K. Rodrigue. "Writing from
Sources, Writing from Sentences." 2010. Writing & Pedagogy.
22 April 2014
<http://justinlewis.me/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Howard-Serviss-Rodrigue-Writing-from-Sources.pdf>.
